Food Chain Magnate

Overview

The fast food business isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be. Hiring people is kind of fun and managing people is too. And when you see your great billboards advertising all sorts of goods from cola to burgers, your heart swells with pride at the fact that what you’re doing is tangible. Until that bozo Joe opened up his burger stand a few blocks away from you. His Happy Hour deals are cutting into your profit margins and sooner or later, you’ll have to unleash your discount managers to declare a price war.

Such is Food Chain Magnate, a game for 2-5 players that has you in the CEO’s seat. As CEO, your role is to hire employees who can do all manners of tasks like advertising and cooking food and drinks to your prospective consumers, train your employees so that they’re even better, and opening up more franchises. The game will also reward you for first mover’s advantage with some special milestones that can help make your operations even more efficient!

But the competition can sure be tough. Throughout the game, your opponent will tamper with your plans by trying to undo your advertising with his own. Or even worse, he might start a price war to steal your customers, luring them over to his establishment with lower prices. The game can get pretty cutthroat at times, and it captures the nature of the business really well.

Core Mechanics: Actions, Organizational Building and Planning.

Victory Condition: It doesn’t get any easier than collecting as much money as possible. Once the bank runs out of money the second time, you will count up how much money you have. The winner is the person with the most money.

Ease of learning: Food Chain Magnate isn’t a difficult game to learn so much that it’s long. The resolution of which restaurant gets business can be confusing initially as well as the ramifications of each of the milestones. There’s also a bit of confusion when it comes to how the roads work and what’s considered an “entrance”, but once you understand it, the game flows pretty quickly and it’s not too bad.